That was a good review of the synth’s features – an kudos for doing that amidst the din & bustle of NAMM!

Looks like a nice hands-on synth, combining great analogue and digital features, and KORG have clearly learnt from the Monologue that you need a good sounding filter (not just an analogue one!).

But I really love the “user extendable” features by SDK, that’s a very unique & innovative concept for a hardware synth. I hope you can have more than one wave extension and modulate a couple of parameters, I’d immediately go code a few interesting wave-table-like oscillators.

I’ve heard some very nice demos of the Prologue, but it does seem a bit pricey for the features on offer, though the polyphony is welcome. Also, VPM synthesis seems to have much more in common with Casios Phase Distortion synthesis than Yamahas FM, certainly sounds like it.

The Korg Minilogue was $500 when it hit the market. That’s $125 dollars per voice. The Prologue is $2,000 @ 16 voices which equals the same $125 a voice. In addition to it comes with an updated filter design, great keybed a third digital oscillator and an upgraded effects section. The pricing seems to be in accordance with the minilogue and prologue.

Thats a weird way of calculating. The monologue costs 300. So if it had 10 voices it should cost 3000? A Dave smith Mopho cost around 700 with one voice and 1000-1100 for the mopho x4 and not 2800 according to your example. The more voices you buy the more the price of one voice has to sink like in every other thing there is in marketing and capitalism. Plus while minilogue had an “affordable” or “democratic” philosophy
. there actually is such thing as average wage. and measured compared to that, in most countries 2000 is a respectable chunk of money and far from affordable. So the Prologue wants to be a high-er end synth but at the end of the day isn`t one and all it has to show for difference, is the digital section (how ironic) where you can add digital waveforms. . It`s a very good analog synth which uniqueness lies in the digital realm. Something does not compute

What your saying is that there is an economy of scale, so the relation between price and polyphony is logarithmic, which is to say you are getting more voices per dollar as polyphony increases. This question is different from the point I was making, which was a simple comparison of polyphony to cost. Based on this criteria the synths in question are ranked as follows:

This shows that the older synthesizers have a lower ranking in terms of a polyphony to cost ratio. The new synthesizers from Korg and DSI have a higher ranking, meaning you are getting more voices per dollar. This metric may be limited in its scope but offers a viable starting point for comparison. It supports the idea that modern synths are a better value than those of previous generations and that the Prologue, based on this criteria seems to have a fair price.

I have intentionally left out qualitative considerations such as sound, design, UI, because they are based on personal preference and offer no basis for comparison. Also, I never made any claims as to the affordability of the synthesizer as that will vary from person to person.

Nice price chart. “Based on this criteria the synths in question..” Nice and fancy words you use but who defined which the synths in question are i wonder? Thats one way of seing it. Only you forgot the Deep Mind 6+12 which would mean you have to recalculate your whole price scale and “polyphony to cost” idea.

I’m not sure what you are trying to argue. You could apply this metric to any synth as a basis for comparison, however limited it may be. I initially compared the minilogue and prologue, Then Moognomog brought up the DSI’s.

The Deepmind 12 would be a better value than all of the synths mentioned above solely based on polyphony vs. price.

Forget it people. It is not worth arguing any further. It really is not that important. In a whole , i find the Prologue expensive, you find it well priced, Synthnote has another point of view and others will have some other point of view. It`s all good. I am not in for a fight. Peace and prosperity and let the Music flow everyone!